John Sutherland's childhood ended before it began: when his father was killed flying a Wellington bomber. Half-orphaned, John was abandoned when his widowed mother decamped to Argentina with a new man. He was brought up by an assortment of well-meaning relatives and had an odd, unsettled childhood. He took refuge in books. But then his solitary reading habit merged into a bad drinking habit. THE BOY WHO LOVED BOOKS is the story of one man's, often desperate, love affair with reading matter; with drink and with an adored, but absent, parent. And during the shifting twentieth century, when profound changes shook society, it is also a personal account of what it was like to be a grammar-school boy, a national-service man and a redbrick graduate.